Insecare
by azathoth01
Summary: An ancient hunger lies imprisoned in the everlasting cold at the top of the world. When it is freed by a hapless traveler, it wreaks havoc upon the world.
1. Chapter 1

At the bottom of a seemingly endless chasm, a man lay gasping for air. The treacherous tundra had tricked him after weeks of travel. As he stared up at the opening that had lead to his downfall, he felt his warm blood slowly pool around him. He allowed himself to cry. It wasn't fair.

The stillness of the cave frightened and infuriated him. No one knew where he was. No one cared where he was. He was alone in the dark, with one crack of light ahead of him.

His salty tears flowed freely now. There was no sobbing to go along with it; he didn't feel as if he had the energy. Rather, there was an ache deep in his gut. He wept for his short life and wept that he would never see his parents again. He wept that he had never had the chance to make love, or be in love.

If there was any bright side, he felt no pain. He struggled mightily to stay awake, but that endeavor slowly slipped from the grasping hand of his consciousness. It was strange that the stone floor felt comfortable, and that the cold and biting wind above seemed to caress his face softly and tenderly here in the cave

Then, he felt something watching him. He was too weak to call out, or even to move his head. All he could do was move his eyes around the room, searching the cave with his peripherals. Even here, at the end of his life, his animal instincts screamed for him to run and hide from whatever was hiding in the darkness just out of his sight.

He heard what sounded like pens dropping in quick succession. It took his mind a moment to place the sound, and horror gripped his throat as he realized it was the sound of insect legs skittering across the rocks.

While he had struggled earlier to remain conscious, he now silently begged for death. The thought of being alive while some horrible creature devoured him enveloped him in a blanket of dread.

The skittering continued. At first it was far away, but it slowly grew louder. Terror built in the man's heart. The sound of the insect legs clicking against the rock suddenly stopped. Silence stretched, seemingly endless. On and on and on it went, until the man felt a prick on his leg. His already ragged breath caught in his throat, and he cursed his weakness.

Too exhausted to move, all he could do was wait as the pricking sensation slowly crawled up his body. The horror was all encompassing. It was near his groin now. It was on his chest. It stopped for a moment.

A leg twitched up, and slowly moved towards the man's mouth. The sharp end of it rested tentatively on his lip. '_I don't want to die like this,' _he thought, _'someone, anyone, please help me!" _

"I am trying to help you."

The voice was not auditory. He heard it the same way he heard thoughts in his own head. It was not entirely pleasant either, like a splinter in his mind.

"Did… did you just talk?"

The creature crawled over his face, revealing its horrendous features.

"Control yourself."

Its voice was old and flowed smoothly. The paralyzed man realized the thing could read his mind. "Wh-What are you?" It took him a moment to realize that he had not asked the question out loud.

"What I am doesn't really matter. What does matter is what I can do to help you."

"You can help me? How?!"

"Again, that is the wrong question. All you need to know is that I can."

Hesitantly, he asked, "What do you want?"

Nothing for a moment.

"I have a dilemma. I can't leave this place without a host. I can get you out of here. I can heal your wounds. I can give you power. But you must agree to be my host."

He wheezed "It's not like I have much choice. What's your name?"

"Insecare. Yours?"

"Bradley. I agree to be your host."

"Good. Get ready. This will not be pleasant."

He screamed in agony.

Atop an icy tundra, a man crawled out of a chasm. He was covered in his own blood. If you looked at him once, you'd think the wind was moving clothes. But for once, the tundra was eerily silent. If looked closer, you'd realize he was covered in thousands of miniscule crawling, corpse-eating insects.


	2. Chapter 2

On the edge of the tundra, a large fishing village lay in peaceful seclusion. The icy area was the only place in the world where the delicatessen crab, commonly known as 'The Jewel of the Sea', could be caught. It was the village's main export, and it provided everyone with comfortable lives, even in this harsh land.

Capturing the Crab was no easy task, however. The frost-blighted land may have been inhospitable, but the ocean was cruel, almost intentional in its difficulty. It was a sad fact of their lives that at least one boat would go down every year. The fishermen and women were stalwart people, not unused to death, but the loss of families still hit them hard.

Corban Haycombe captained the ship Burden and lead a crew of ten men. The sea had been comparatively kind that day, and they'd be able to wrap up the season on a high note. They'd gone beyond their quota, meaning a bonus for all the crewmembers.

His men were a rough people, fond of drink and revelry, but when it came to pulling in a catch, they worked with a speed and ferocity that would leave any man not from this village breathless.

"It'll be good to see the miss. I love being out on the sea and being able to feed my family, but it gets awful lonely out there on the cold water."

Jack Roberts was a new member of the crew. Not yet eighteen years old, and he already had a wife and four kids at home. The lives of the village people could be short and cruel, so they married young and tried to cram as much love and warmth into their home life as they possibly could.

"Aye, Mary looked like she was about ready to pop another when you last left. You two fuck like rabbits, don't you?"

"It isn't my fault we're so young and full of energy Corban. Just because you and your wife have grown old and tired of each other doesn't mean we're all damned to the same fate."

Corban was barely fifty-three, but for a fishing captain, he may as well have been eighty.

Fishing was a young man's game, and even those that became captains stopped at the ripe old age of forty.

"I'll have you know that me and my miss still have a very exciting bedroom life, I just happen to love my work, is all."

He and his wife, Maywind, had been married close to forty years now. They had ten sons, two of which had died in childbirth, and five had died at sea in the last year. He had always thrown himself at his trade, but grief had turned hard work into compulsive work. He needed the sea to distract himself from his pain, and his wife needed the alone time to nurture her own wounds. They loved each other, and they had grown hard, but the loss had hit harder still.

Corban docked his boat, and all of his men exited. The dock hands went through the catch and found that very few crab had died. The cash was split as it always was, eight percent to each crew member, twenty percent to Corban.

It was about nine in the afternoon when he finally got home from the dock. He walked into his house and found his wife, Maywind, ladling out bowls of stew, with big golden brown rolls set on the kitchen island to sop up the remnants of stew.

"Corban, your home!" His wife walked over and hugged him fiercely. As the door closed behind him, he melted in her arms. Corban had missed her dearly.

He and Maywind ate the stew and chatted about little nothings, enjoying each other's company. After they had finished dinner, they went to the library.

"I got us a whole new set of books on the history of Galen," she said excitedly. The fishing village was small, and many outsiders could have easily mistaken the people's simplicity for stupidity, but the villagers were very literate, although most studied for practical purposes; the more they knew about the world outside of them, the better they would be able to trade with those who came for the crab they sweated and bled to catch.

However, Corban was among the large group of people who honestly enjoyed reading. He and his wife spent a lot of time reading history about Galen, his biggest customer. It had taken years of careful negotiation and not a little cunning to get them to buy from him, considering how many people in the village were vying for their business.

Galen was the largest and most opulent city in the world, and the demand for The Jewel of the Sea was ten times larger than from any other customer. Both Corban and Maywind were hoping to move to Galen. It was the primary excuse for his continued work as captain of the Burden.

"How'd your latest commission go Maywind?" Maywind had found a niche in the community as a master Glassworker, something that was relatively new to the village. She had gone abroad as a younger woman, as part of her parent's hope to get her away from the icy village.

She returned after a five-year apprenticeship and had been turning out projects with all the passion and ferocity that a woman raised in the fishing village could produce. It had been hard at first, convincing her father to buy the supplies for her to start producing her pieces. Here in the village, art was often scoffed at, but, as any master artist can, Maywind had been able to stop the naysayers in their tracks with her stunning and vivid colors, and the lifelike creatures she had crafted from molten glass.

"Very well! That girl, Greta, has proven to be a wise investment of my time. I wish I had the energy to teach her, but I think it would be best to suggest to her parents that she be sent to learn the trade. She could become a great Glassworker."

"I'm glad to hear it! Maybe she'll return one day and this drab community can get a little more color."

Maywind agreed happily.

Corban and Maywind Haycombe sat in their respective chairs next to the fire, reading about far away wars and local trading customs.

'It is an old custom in Galen to distinguish one's rank by wearing a broach. The broach system is almost as intricate as a language, with specifics such as: what kind of stone, what size of stone, the vibrancy of said stone, where the stone was gotten in the world, what metal the stone is set in, and many many other related peculiarities. Any newcomer need devote considerable time to this system if he or she would wish to belong to the society."

Corban set _Galen Society and Cultural Necessities_ aside and kissed his wife. Her response caught him off guard, and before he knew it, they were making passionate love next to the fireplace. Their passion had changed over the years. The once animalistic hunger of youth had been replaced by a slower, gentler lovemaking. Sex had once been a pursuit of pleasure for the couple, and while the roughness of lust did occasionally return to the couple, coitus had turned into another form of mutual support. They protected each other from the cold hard world with their warm soft bodies.

Maywind loved her husband for many reasons. She loved him for his constant fidelity. She loved his drive to work, and his ability to support and feed the family they had built together. She loved his fearlessness in facing the sea, year after year. What she loved most, though, was this. The secret softness that he showed to no one else but her. The tenderness of his kiss. The light dancing of his fingers on her back. These were hers and hers alone.

They slept there by the fireplace, holding each other as only those who know how short life is can.

It was in this moment of rare and precious bliss that they awoke to the sound of screaming.


End file.
